Keystone XL Scandal: Obama Attorney’s Law Firm Represents TransCanada

Tar sands tailings ponds hold liquid by-products from bitumen extraction containing carcinogens,which leak into water systems. Source: Failing on Tailings by Hannah McKinnon in Environmental Defence: Air and Water Issues, June 2013.

Extreme energy extraction — whether fracking, mountaintop removal, Arctic drilling or tar sands oil — requires great investigative reporting to expose the links between the corporations, the politicians they influence, and the paths of influence. Here, Steve Horn of DeSmogBlog does it again: a masterful expose of the ties between the Obama Administration and TransCanada, the company building the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Not only does President Obama’s personal attorney, Robert Bauer, work for a law firm which does legal work for Transcanada, but Bauers’ wife, Anita Dunn, currently does PR work for the TransCanada and freight rail industry lobbying group.

Anita Dunn has met with top Obama Administration officials 100 times since 2009. That’s worth repeating.

Best to read the full post, and thanks to DeSmogBlog for letting us repost it in its entirety:

Furthermore, Dan Sullivan, current Commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources, and former Alaska Attorney General and former Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, is a former Perkins attorney.

Under 18 USC § 1001, making a “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation…[to the] executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States” is a crime punishable by up to five years in jail.

On top of his job at Perkins Coie, Bauer – a well-known architect of bending campaign finance law to allow more corporate money to flood into electoral races – served as general counsel to President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. He also serves as general counsel to the Democratic National Committee and did electoral law work for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

His wife, Anita Dunn is the co-owner of SDKnickerbocker, former Obama Communications Director, senior advisor for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign and is the former communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee under then-Senator Kerry. She’s met with top Obama administration officials more than 100 times since leaving in 2009, according to a recent New York Times investigation.

Perkins Coie is a global firm with 19 offices worldwide and maintains close ties to the Democratic Party above and beyond Bob Bauer. Bauer’s colleague Mark Ellis, for example, does legal work on behalf of the “Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Associations and numerous U.S. senators and representatives and their campaigns,” according to his Perkins Coie biography.

“In Alaska, our lawyers have long represented leading oil and gas companies on the North Slope and the Cook Inlet…We are extensively involved in efforts to develop the Point Thomson field and commercialize Alaska’s natural gas resources with a pipeline to Lower 48 markets.”

The “efforts to…commercialize Alaska’s natural gas resources with a pipeline to Lower 48 markets” that Perkins’ website refers to is the South Central LNG Project co-owned by TransCanada. A map on the original Alaska Gas Pipeline Project website depicts the route: “The project is designed to connect Alaska’s North Slope natural gas resources to new markets and deliver a reliable and secure source of clean burning energy for decades to come,” explain TransCanada and ExxonMobil on the original Alaska Gas Pipeline Project website. “TransCanada and ExxonMobil have the expertise, experience, and financial capability to develop what would be one of the largest privately funded energy projects in the history of North America.”

“I actually took a little, first-floor townhouse on Capitol Hill, and opened what was really a two- or three-person office. It was the first state office, and we worked pretty much exclusively on the pipeline,” said Martin. “The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Act was passed as the direct result of the passing of the Settlement Act.”

“Americans Know a Rat When They Smell One”

Anita Dunn will likely be working overtime in the coming weeks and months using her insider/outsider status to ensure its approval on behalf of the client she shares with her husband Bob Bauer’s law firm, TransCanada.

“Only in the ethically-challenged world of K Street lobbyists could it be considered OK for a power couple like Dunn & Bauer to exploit their White House connections to promote the interests of a foreign corporation like TransCanada,” Hammond told DeSmogBlog in an interview.

“Beltway insiders may yawn at the fact that TransCanada has hired people so close to President Obama and Secretary Kerry to push their dirty and dangerous pipeline, but ordinary Americans know a rat when they smell one.”

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